Wednesday, August 24, 2011

On Random Lists Of Names

I was naively hoping decorum would prevent our national media from beginning the silly speculation about who will replace Jack Layton as leader of the New Democrats until the man was buried but it hasn't happened. So lets look at the first absurd list of random names hastily thrown together.

At the risk of being labelled ageist, Gary Doer, Nycole Turmel, Joe Comartin, Bill Blaikie, Lorne Nystrom and Greg Sellinger are too old to take over the role at 60+ years of age. Look at it this way. It's 4 years until the next election and should the New Democrats prevail you'd want the party's leader to be able to serve at least 2 four year terms. This would put the youngest of the lot at 72 by that time and the oldest at 80. And that is the best case scenario.

Libby Davies, Megan Leslie, Robert Chisholm and Olivia Chow are not even close to being fluent in French. Considering the New Democrats are working from a base that is mostly from a French speaking province this is an impossible obstacle to overcome.

Brian Topp. Sorry, Brian who. If you've never even run for elected office you have no business gunning for the top job on your first attempt.

So this leaves us with Paul Dewar and Thomas Mulcair. In this random list of names these are the only 2 that are at least qualified enough to be considered.